Authentication dialog for root privileges broken in Debian Trixie XFCE

 

Above is a screenshot of the dialog in action so you know what I mean.

The dialog appears launching Synaptic package manager, unlocking printer settings or launching LightDM Greeter settings.

Or should. On new installs of XFCE in Debian Trixie it will fail silently, and nothing will happen when clicking on the relevant menu item or button.

The reason is that the agent required to bring up this dialog (policykit-1-gnome) has been removed from Debian Testing because it's an ancient Gnome package which is no longer maintained. See this bug report.

The removal of policykit-1-gnome has affected XFCE because it is a recommended install with at least one XFCE package that I can see (Thunar) but not a direct dependency of XFCE. XFCE relies on it being there, but does not actively ensure that it is there.

Other DEs that rely on the package like Mate and LXDE have noticed that the writing was on the wall for policykit-1-gnome and produced their own version of the package, namely mate-polkit and lxpolkit.

Other Linux distributions have noticed the same thing and released a package to fulfil the same function in XFCE, for example xfce-polkit in Arch.

There is now a Debian bug report for this rather crucial to the desktop missing agent. Somebody has come up with an agent for Debian (also called xfce-polkit), but it hasn't made it into Trixie, according to this bug report.

So, at the moment, for new installs of Trixie, there are going to be issues such as Synaptic filing to launch. See this topic on the Debian forum. (Anybody with a Trixie install predating the removal will still have policykit-1-gnome installed and not experience the issue.

The solution? For the moment, install lxpolkit or mate-polkit, or compile the proposed Debian xfce-polkit package yourself. (The screenshot at the top is Debian xfce-polkit.)

Power Manager in Debian Trixie XFCE and lock screen settings

Depending on the time of reading this, you may be wondering why lock screen settings are not working in XFCE Power Manager in Debian Trixie, or why lock screen settings have changed, or rejoicing that a long-standing bug in Power Manager has been fixed.

Let me explain. XFCE 4.20 in Debian Trixie has dropped light-locker: 

There is no dedicated "security" tab anymore. Lock screen management was massively simplified and "Light Locker" was dropped. "lock-on-sleep" is now synchronized with xfce4-session and xfce4-screensaver. Screen locking settings are now only handled by xfce4-screensaver to avoid conflicts. A button to open xfce4-screensaver-preferences was added.

 XFCE 4.20 tour

Unfortunately, xfce4-screensaver has not been made a dependency of Power Manager, meaning the user will not be able to change lock screen settings. See this topic on the Debian User Forum. There is a bug report for this issue. The good news is that removing light-locker and installing xfce4-screensaver gets everything working nicely.

More good news is that this change side-steps an eleven year old bug which meant that suspend would not work with the screen locked using light-locker. See my blog post on the issue, the Debian Wiki on the issue, and the bug report.

So, if you are using Debian Trixie XFCE at the time of writing, you may have come to this post seeking an answer as to why you can't change lock screen settings any more. If you are reading at some point in the future where xfce4-screensaver has been added as a dependency, you may have noticed a change in XFCE Power manager, the absence of the Security tab, or the presence of a new Screensaver Management button.

Whatever the case, Power Manager in XFCE 4.20 in Debian Trixie using xfce4-screensaver is now a joined-up and rational, rather than the dog's breakfast it was in the past (see my post from 2013), and finally bug-free after over a decade. Happy days!

System sounds in Debian XFCE

If you look under the Settings tab of the XFCE Appearance application, you will find two options under Event sounds, Enable event sounds and Enable input feedback sounds. (Quite why a sound setting would be in the Appearance menu is a bit of a mystery, but hey-ho.)

In Debian at least, ticking these options seems to have no effect. It hasn't really bothered me for years, but I thought I would investigate if it is possible to enable system sounds.

As is often the case with Linux issues, I came across various suggestions on the issue dating back over a decade. This is what worked for me. First install package libcanberra-pulse, and check that System sounds are enabled in the audio mixer.

This got me some system sounds. Changing audio volume in the audio mixer (but not from the panel icon) produced a sound.

Other system sounds required package libcanberra-gtk3-0, and exporting a GTK module, which as far as I can work out makes the kernel aware that GTK events should trigger a system sound. The instructions are at ubuntuforums.org. They date from 2012, but still seem to be necessary and work.

The default sound theme installed has sound for a limited number of events, so I installed the Smooth sound them which has more.

Here are my sources of information:

How to enable system sounds forum.xfce.org

[Solved] System Sounds forum.xfce.org

13 year old bug in Tango icons fixed in Debian!

The default icon theme in Debian XFCE has had an annoying bug for a very long time. I wrote about it in 2013, but the issue was reported as a bug in 2011. (See bugs.freedesktop.org for the original bug report and gitlab.freedesktop.org for more information.)

There were no icons for special folders in the home directory with the Tango icon theme, meaning that these folders defaulted to the Gnome icon theme, as shown in this screenshot from the Gitlab bug report:

The Tango icon project has been dead for 16 years, but Matteo Bini has forked the Tango icon theme to include XDG user directory icons (as well as other fixes).

The forked package has replaced the original Tango icon theme in Debian Testing, so the next release of Debian will have icons for special folders in XFCE at last, and the home directory will look like this:

Personally I prefer the look of the Papirus icon theme, but at least now the default icon theme will not have this annoying bug.

The Tango icon theme is still a bit dated in some ways. For example, the Synaptic icon is a box a CD and a floppy disk.

Hands up anybody who can remember installing software from a floppy disk, and if you do, doesn't getting old suck?